How Many Items Are In Your Inbox?

Never before has the world been as connected as we are today. We are connected to each other, to our work, to our surroundings, and the other side of the planet, thanks to the wonder of a vast array of electronic devices and social and productivity applications, each one bringing everything just a little closer to our fingertips. Living in the future is something else!

There are a plethora of studies, trying to sort out whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Does it make us stronger, smarter, and closer to other people; one interwoven global community? Does it make us less; scattered and distracted with shorter attention span and lower threshold for quiet contemplation? At the end of the day, the answer is this: like any other tool that human beings have created and harnessed, technology has as much impact on our lives, for better or worse, as we allow. It connects us, supplies us with information and builds bridges to exactly the extent that we foster those skills, and it distracts and interrupts us to exactly the extent that our habits allow.In our personal lives, this amounts to a philosophical choice, and it’s a personal set of limits that we are the first generation of people to start learning to define. However, in the workplace, it is up to each organization to define for its employees how to use the tools available to maximize productivity, minimize interruption; to make smart use of the constant connectivity to our work and avoid the situation where that connectivity means that we are so continually ‘on-call’ that our rest time is interrupted.

With the On-Point Time Management System, employees learn how to quiet the continual interruptions of e-mail, calendar reminders, texts, and other alerts without losing track of the connectivity that is so valuable in today’s workplace. Not only can we increase focus and mental clarity by managing our technological tools better, by gaining control over the process of a continually overflowing inbox, we can keep from missing potentially important and costly action items. How many items are in your inbox right now? How many items in all the inboxes across your organization? How easy would it be, among all of the low priority and informational messages, for an important piece of information to be missed? How much damage can the wrong missed e-mail message do?

Every organization uses a different system of software to manage day to day operations, but whether you are using the ubiquitous Outlook or something else, most of us spend more time in our e-mail/calendar software than all other software combined. However, the vast majority of employees have not been trained to use all of the tools and features that this software includes. Not only can we wrest control of interruptions by using the features included in our e-mail/calendar software, we can also set up a system of rules, priorities and automated tasks to take a vast amount of ‘management’ work off of our hands altogether, letting us spend more hours fulfilling our job descriptions, and fewer hours working as an ‘e-mail manager.’ In fact, the average employee who undergoes ‘On-Point Time Management’ training regains as much as ten hours a week!

Not only can we streamline workload and quiet interruptions with strategic use of our e-mail software, many organizations aren’t even aware of the benefits of organizational software like Office’s OneNote (a desk de-cluttering life saver that is already installed on most organizations’ computers with Office!) By digitizing documents, notes and other important information and storing them on a communally accessible server, we can improve passive communications (i.e. empower sharing of information between team members without the need for requests and active sharing of documents) and keep everyone working together simply and efficiently.

Ultimately, whether you are using Arcade’s On-Point Time Management system, or another method altogether, by thinking strategically about your organization’s management of technological resources, you can improve employees’ mental states, increase productivity and clear up cluttered work spaces, all while keeping your company on the forefront of office technology.

If you haven’t developed a concrete, strategic plan for managing these resources, you have an opportunity to drastically improve productivity and minimize risks. Not sure where to start? Call Arcade today at 425-269-4886 for a free initial consultation about the On-Point Time Management system!

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Whether you are looking for a full scale revision of your business practices, seeking help resolving a quickly escalating conflict, or just looking for a training session or two to keep your team sharp, Arcade can help! Call us today at 425-269-4886 or e-mail us at mary@arcadewayfinding.com to find out what we can do for you!